By Tiernan Ray

Venerable chip analysis house The Linley Group this week offers another interesting item on the state of play of Intel‘s (INTC) microprocessor business, with authors Kevin Krewell and Linley Gwennap given a broad overview of “Silvermont,” Intel’s new CPU “core” for mobile devices, which the chip maker detailed two weeks ago.

Writing in the Group’s Microprocessor Report newsletter, the authors note that the original “Atom” mobile processor architecture was announced five years ago — “a long time in the CPU world.”

The authors point out Silvermont will find its way into a plethora of different designs spanning many different product categories:

Silvermont greatly improves Atom’s single-thread performance while still supporting multicore scaling. Its primary competition is ARM’s Cortex-A15, and second- arily AMD’s Jaguar […] Single-thread performance is also important in the emerging microserver market, where Intel is starting to deploy Atom-based processors The 22nm CPU will appear in many different Intel products ranging from smartphones to servers. Silvermont will debut in the quad-core Bay Trail, which aims for tablets and convertible PCs […] A dual-core version, Merrifield, will power the next generation of Atom-based smartphones […] The eight-core Avoton, scheduled for 4Q13 production, is a power- efficient processor for microservers. Intel is also using Silvermont in the Rangeley communications processors in an unnamed processor design for in- vehicle infotainment systems, and potentially in other embedded ASSPs […] Intel is developing a 14nm shrink called Airmont tar- geting 2014 production, and it plans to release an unnamed new microarchitecture (Futuremont?) after that, likely in 2015.

Krewell and Gwennap see some substantial performance improvements through a variety of techniques in Silvermont, noting that the “quad-core implementation [Bay Trail] shows dramatic improvement compared with the dual-core (four- thread) Clover Trail processor, which employs the earlier Saltwell design (the 32nm version of Silverthorne)”:

When running a single thread, Silvermont can access the full 1MB L2 cache, whereas Saltwell is limited to 512KB. In this mode, Intel claims an average of twice the performance—a gigantic improvement—across a variety of mobile benchmarks. Given Silvermont’s 50% better per-clock performance, this data implies a 33% higher clock speed at the same CPU power. Since Clover Trail is shipping today at 2.0GHz, these figures imply Silvermont will hit 2.66GHz in Bay Trail.

Silvermont, they contend, is “roughly similar” to parts from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) known as “Bobcat” and “Jaguar.” However, Intel has supplied not actual benchmarks, they note, so a lot of the comparison is guess-work at this point.

The authors note Intel is more focused for the moment on shooting down chips using the rival architecture from ARM Holdings (ARMH):

In its Silvermont introduction, Intel made several compari- sons to Cortex-A15 processors […] We expect this tactic is the opening round of Intel’s attempt to debunk the advantages of quad-core processors in smartphones. Unfortunately, the company may find its argument difficult to make with consumers, who are rapidly embracing these processors.

In concluding, the authors note that Intel’s “real advantage is its advanced 22-nanometer process” technology for chip manufacture, including 3-D “TriGate” transistors, which can produce a “wide dynamic (operating) range” of power and performance. The company will have to scramble, however, as the authors note that Intel won’t have dual-core parts until the start of next year:

Even so, Intel has some catching up to do. It will sam- ple Merrifield in late 2013, and some customers are likely to announce phones in 1Q14 (perhaps at CES or MWC) and begin shipments in 2Q14. Until then, Intel’s single-core Medfield will struggle to compete against quad-core A15- class processors. The dual-core Clover Trail+ is a stronger competitor, but its higher power limits it to tablets and extra-large phones (phablets).

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.